Page 66 - GFA – A Different Drumbeat
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GFA – A Different Drumbeat 66
make a report on the nature and extent of the famine and to devise, if possible,
relief measures.
From Chefoo I proceeded by sea to Tientsin and then on by rail to Peiping.
After interviewing the Commission, I left there on March 25th, and travelled
down the Peiping-Hankow line as far as Chengchow where I changed to the
Lunghai line and so along to the terminus at Lingpao. Then commenced our
long overland journey of some seven hundred odd English miles to Lanchow,
the provincial capital of Kansuh. This was the eleventh time I had done this
journey, and it was by no means the easiest. The transport problem was
exceedingly acute, for not only was the price for hiring carts four or five times
the normal rate, but animals were scarce and those available were in such an
exhausted condition that they were literally dying in numbers all along the
highway. One instance. From Pingliang to Lanchow our party engaged three
carts, each double harnessed, and to ensure getting as good animals as
possible, we paid an amount above the usual rate. The journey took ten days
to complete but of the three carts hired, only one reached the destination,
three of the six animals dying en route.
To write in detail of all the terrible things I saw during my journey would far
exceed the limits of this short report. I will just relate a few of the incidents
which dwell in my memory from the journey on that veritable “Trail of Death”.
The district between Pingliang and Anting furnished the worst conditions I was
destined to see and in this area the famine was almost entirely due to drought.
It was indescribably sad to revisit this district, which one had known in other
days, and to see the change and witness the suffering. Never shall I forget a
midday halt we made at a little village at the top of a high hill; a little place at
which I have stayed in former years and where I then had some
acquaintances. On this occasion we found the village with only about one
tenth of its inhabitants left and these were mere walking skeletons. We had
made a practice of carrying a supply of bread with us, from whatever places it
could be purchased, and of surreptitiously distributing this along the way. Had
the starving beggars known that we carried such supplies, we should have
been mobbed. At this particular village, of which I now write, the starving
inhabitants crowded round our carts while the animals were being fed with
very restricted fodder rations. The carters fed their animals out of large round
baskets which were setup on portable wooden trestles which were carried on
the carts. The people gathered round these baskets and the peas which the
animals spilled out of the baskets, or out of their mouths, were carefully picked
up and eaten. One of the carters inadvertently scattered a little bran on the
ground. An old man, almost too weak to move, literally fell upon the spot, and
scooping up the minute quantity of bran, with the dust with which it had
become mingled, crammed the lot into his mouth. Saddest of aIl sights was to
make a report on the nature and extent of the famine and to devise, if possible,
relief measures.
From Chefoo I proceeded by sea to Tientsin and then on by rail to Peiping.
After interviewing the Commission, I left there on March 25th, and travelled
down the Peiping-Hankow line as far as Chengchow where I changed to the
Lunghai line and so along to the terminus at Lingpao. Then commenced our
long overland journey of some seven hundred odd English miles to Lanchow,
the provincial capital of Kansuh. This was the eleventh time I had done this
journey, and it was by no means the easiest. The transport problem was
exceedingly acute, for not only was the price for hiring carts four or five times
the normal rate, but animals were scarce and those available were in such an
exhausted condition that they were literally dying in numbers all along the
highway. One instance. From Pingliang to Lanchow our party engaged three
carts, each double harnessed, and to ensure getting as good animals as
possible, we paid an amount above the usual rate. The journey took ten days
to complete but of the three carts hired, only one reached the destination,
three of the six animals dying en route.
To write in detail of all the terrible things I saw during my journey would far
exceed the limits of this short report. I will just relate a few of the incidents
which dwell in my memory from the journey on that veritable “Trail of Death”.
The district between Pingliang and Anting furnished the worst conditions I was
destined to see and in this area the famine was almost entirely due to drought.
It was indescribably sad to revisit this district, which one had known in other
days, and to see the change and witness the suffering. Never shall I forget a
midday halt we made at a little village at the top of a high hill; a little place at
which I have stayed in former years and where I then had some
acquaintances. On this occasion we found the village with only about one
tenth of its inhabitants left and these were mere walking skeletons. We had
made a practice of carrying a supply of bread with us, from whatever places it
could be purchased, and of surreptitiously distributing this along the way. Had
the starving beggars known that we carried such supplies, we should have
been mobbed. At this particular village, of which I now write, the starving
inhabitants crowded round our carts while the animals were being fed with
very restricted fodder rations. The carters fed their animals out of large round
baskets which were setup on portable wooden trestles which were carried on
the carts. The people gathered round these baskets and the peas which the
animals spilled out of the baskets, or out of their mouths, were carefully picked
up and eaten. One of the carters inadvertently scattered a little bran on the
ground. An old man, almost too weak to move, literally fell upon the spot, and
scooping up the minute quantity of bran, with the dust with which it had
become mingled, crammed the lot into his mouth. Saddest of aIl sights was to
